Proposed E-payment Process Model to Enhance Quality of Service through Maintaining the Trust of Availability

The use of the Internet has become an urgent necessity in various fields and activities. One of such important fields could be electronic business (E-Business). E-business includes all operations and activities related to Internet commerce, including e-commerce, e-marketing, eservices, e-payment, and electronic transfer. This proposal focuses on two perspectives that are under e-commerce umbrella where many e-payment process models suffer from the lack of clarity in the special procedures of the verification of the quality of services. This proposal, therefore, proposes a new E-payment process model to enhance the quality of service through maintaining availability. The proposed model focuses on the concepts of electronic payment model dimensions, which includes integrity, non-repudiation, authenticity, confidentiality, privacy, and availability. Accordingly, the proposed model implements the availability dimension in order to improve the quality of services that are provided to the consumer.

💡 Research Summary

The paper addresses a persistent problem in e‑business: while many electronic payment (e‑payment) systems focus on traditional security attributes such as integrity, non‑repudiation, authentication, confidentiality, and privacy, they often neglect the dimension of availability—i.e., the ability of the system to remain continuously operational and accessible to users. The authors argue that availability is a critical component of electronic service quality (E‑SQ) and that its omission undermines both consumer trust and merchant confidence, ultimately degrading the quality of service (QoS) offered by e‑commerce platforms.

To remedy this gap, the authors propose a comprehensive e‑payment process model that explicitly incorporates availability as a primary design goal. The model is built around three core technical components: (1) an Automated Clearing House (ACH) that serves as a financial intermediary linking buyer and seller banks; (2) a payment gateway that encrypts sensitive payment data and mediates communication between the merchant’s web server and the ACH; and (3) an e‑marketplace layer that hosts buyer and seller interactions and enforces service‑level agreements (SLAs). The workflow proceeds as follows: a consumer selects products on an online shop, the merchant’s server forwards the transaction details to the payment gateway, the gateway encrypts the data and forwards it to the ACH, the ACH validates account balances and authorizes the transaction, the result is returned to the merchant, and finally the buyer’s bank transfers funds to the seller’s bank via ACH. Throughout this flow, the model embeds availability‑enhancing mechanisms.

Key availability mechanisms include: (a) defining explicit SLA targets (e.g., 99.9 % uptime) for each component; (b) deploying real‑time monitoring tools that collect metrics such as traffic volume, response latency, and error rates; (c) implementing an automated “clearing house” error‑recovery routine that automatically retries failed authorizations, switches to alternative payment channels, or redirects traffic to redundant servers; and (d) designing the underlying IT infrastructure with redundancy (dual servers, load balancers) and elastic scaling (cloud‑based auto‑scaling) to mitigate hardware or network failures. The authors also propose a structured guideline for application and infrastructure design, data analysis, parameter measurement, monitoring, reporting, and rapid error correction, all aimed at sustaining high availability.

The paper claims that by guaranteeing high availability, the model will increase consumer perception of reliability, reduce transaction abandonment, and improve merchant satisfaction—thereby elevating overall E‑SQ. The authors cite literature linking availability to customer trust and repeat purchase behavior, positioning their model as a practical pathway to achieve those outcomes.

However, the study acknowledges significant limitations. No empirical validation, pilot deployment, or performance benchmarking is presented; the model remains a conceptual framework. Consequently, the actual impact on transaction latency, system throughput, or security‑availability trade‑offs is unquantified. The authors recommend future work involving real‑world pilot implementations, stress testing under failure scenarios, and cost‑benefit analyses to substantiate the theoretical benefits.

In conclusion, the paper contributes a novel perspective by foregrounding availability within e‑payment system design. It offers a detailed process architecture, operational guidelines, and monitoring strategies intended to bolster trust and service quality in electronic commerce. While promising, the model’s efficacy must be verified through rigorous experimentation and real‑world adoption before it can be recommended as a standard for e‑payment platforms.